My birthday was Saturday. Hale and healthy and happy, I celebrated my first day on earth, 59 years ago, with friendship, food, wine, cards and presents. My mother, you may recall from my May 15 column, "Witness to an assumption," is 94 and dying. Any day now, hospice says, she will be finished here. That leaves me in a strange place — delighted to be 59 and feted, and simultaneously conscious of the sacredness of death. My passage into life and my mother's passage out of life are happening on the same day.

My sister, Mary, saw Mom on Saturday and reports that she is completely bedridden, no longer eating, and rarely responsive. A steady dose of pain killers blocks her from experiencing the harsh reality of her body which can no longer send healing circulation to the end reaches of her translucent skin. The medication, we know, is a blessing. But those same painkillers have captured her consciousness and hold it in a deep place, inaccessible to the rest of us.

She no longer calls out, "The only way is up and up and up and up" or "Over the river, over the river, over the river." Occasionally she sends up a flag, a small verbal clue as to her whereabouts. Her loving caregivers have heard her mumble, "In the middle, in the middle, in the middle." But when they ask her, "Laurene, the middle of what?" she doesn't answer. Perhaps she is speaking to no one, or perhaps she is speaking to everyone. Maybe there's a crowd on the shore of that river and she alone can see them: Catherine, her mother; Lawrence, her father; Jay, her husband; Robert, her brother; Gerry, Joan and Mil, her sisters. Friends, teachers, mentors. Maybe they're all there. The souls she knew on earth have all moved on. They're somewhere else — on that shore, perhaps. Maybe she's calling to them: "I see you. I'm in the middle and I'm getting closer. I'm coming."

We can't be sure that's what she's saying, but it makes sense. She's been talking about that river for months now, and it can't be a real river. She never lived on or near a river. So it isn't that she's stepping back in time — we could tell when she was doing that. She has taken us back to her life in Chicago many times. We've heard her get ready to go out dancing at the Drake Hotel in 1937 with her sweetheart, the man destined to be our father. We've heard her relive her trip to Europe in 1958. Listening to her, we could practically see the ship. There is no doubt that this was the highlight of her life, because she, who pooh-poohed mementos, tucked the menu from a Thursday night dinner on the Queen Elizabeth inside the front cover of the family's lone photo album. Listening, we could follow along, occasionally recognizing a cathedral or a painting, as she traipsed once again through Florence, Rome and Lisbon. But nowhere was there a river — not in Europe, not in Chicago where she grew up and lived till 1964, and not in Marshfield, Wisconsin, where she lived for the past 43. The river is new — as this last passage in her life is new.

So, on Saturday morning, I decided to celebrate my birthday in a new way. Instead of focusing on me and what I was doing that day, I decided to start the day focusing on my mother on the afternoon of June 16, 1948, in St. Joseph's hospital, Chicago, Illinois.

Picking up my soul journal, I stepped, as best I could, into the skin of Laurene Conner, 35, wife of Jay Conner, Lieutenant Colonel USAF, home at last after the long lonely vacancy of war. Laurene, the adoring mother of Jay R., a rambunctious 5-year-old who is starting kindergarten in September, that is, if he can survive the daredevil delights of summer. Laurene, mother of Claire, almost 4 and probably in need of eye surgery. Laurene, nine months pregnant with a third baby, gender as yet unknown. Laurene, laboring on a stiff hospital cot on a sticky Chicago summer afternoon, before the invention of air conditioning. Laurene, drifting into the medicated oblivion considered advanced medical care for childbirth in 1948. Laurene, who, when she wakes, will take her new baby home to an already cramped four-room apartment on the South Side of Chicago.

Soldiers and their wives were grateful to find any kind of housing after the war. After living first with her parents and then with his mother during the war, my mother was happy to have that little apartment. But as I wrote, I realized she was worried about space, and money, and caring for two baby girls while trying to protect one wild little cowboy who was a regular denizen of the local emergency room. Re-creating that day in my journal through well-worn family stories and a fresh dose of imagination, I felt my mother's heaviness in the heat. I felt her weariness. And I felt her worry.

Thanks for having me, Mom, I wrote. Thank you for all the gifts you've given me. And with that idea my pen took off` making two slash lines down the page. Mom on the left, Dad on the right. What were their gifts to me? Soul writing is fast writing, writing without conscious thought or direction. Quickly, the gifts poured onto the page.

From Mom: the need to read and the need to write, belief in the power of education, an affinity for organization and planning, shyness, comfort with being alone, satisfaction with tasks completed, cooking as an in-kitchen travelogue, appreciation for work, and devotion to God. Sprinkled in among those "good" gifts were a strong wiring for worry, the expectation that women should be taken care of, an itchy need for recognition, obsession with "the good fight," and a propensity for disappointment.

From Dad: the gift of speech, the pleasure of a sharp mental tussle, love of a good evening's meal and a good night's sleep, the ability to charm, miraculous thinking, and devotion to prayer. Tucked in among those were struggle, irrational anger, disappointment, and that Conner commitment to "the good fight."

Looking at those two lists, I realized I was looking at my DNA — not my biological DNA, my spiritual DNA. Not the physical wiring for green eyes and an Irish nose, but the spiritual wiring for my soul.

I underlined the gifts I especially like. Things like reading and writing and speaking. Those come in big, bright, shiny, red boxes with sparkling gold ribbon. But equally rich, I realized, are the gifts that come in the not-so-pretty packages — the little, crooked, disheveled boxes of worry and struggle and disappointment. They have been my teachers — perhaps my greatest teachers. They are the gifts that taught my soul how to seek and my heart how to feel.

Thank you, Mom, for your magnificent gifts — all of them. Although there's no card or check in the mail from you today, you have given me something much better. And I'm grateful, oh so grateful.

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Janet Conner, S.E. (Spiritual Explorer), is the creator of the Spiritual Geography map and author of the Spiritual Geography book series. She is currently working on a new book, "Writing Down the Soul: How to Activate and Listen to the Extraordinary Voice Within," for Conari Press. The Spiritual Geography books are available through Amazon or Spiritual Geography. Janet would love to hear about your experiences with soul writing at {email janetconner@tampabay.rr.com}janetconner@tampabay.rr.com{/email}. © copyright 2007 by Janet Conner.